Irene Hopkins had a startling experience recently when she was in her bathroom getting ready for work. She declined to reveal exactly what she said - this being a family news-paper and all - but Hopkins made a rather forceful comment because she spotted a rat peering down at her from the skylight in the ceiling.
Hopkins lives with her husband, Dan Hopkins, on Upper Queen Anne Hill in a tidy little house on Fifth Avenue West, and to say she was shocked is putting it mildly. "I had no idea that people had rats on their roofs," Irene shuddered.
The couple soon discovered they weren't alone after talking to their neighbors, one of whom was a little embarrassed to even bring up the issue of rats hanging out in such a well-to-do neighborhood, Irene said.
It is, after all, a touchy subject. "There's almost a stigma about it, like having head lice," Irene noted.
And some people go to extraordinary lengths to get rid of the rodents. Irene spoke of one neighbor who smelled a terrible smell coming from behind his walls and figured a rat or mouse had died back there.
The man started by poking small holes in the walls trying to locate the stinky source, but that didn't work. "He finally got so frustrated he took a sledge hammer to the walls," she said.
Actually, the man took out all his walls, said Dan Hopkins. "It was a good excuse to do a remodel," he explained.
Dan tackled the rat problem at his house in a more conventional fashion. "I was worried about poison because they'll eat it and go somewhere to die. Who knows where?" he said.
So the couple hooked up an anti-rodent device in the house, an electronic gizmo that purportedly drives away rats and mice. And Dan used old-fashioned snap traps baited with something irresistible to the critters. "They love peanut butter," he grinned.
The couple could hear the traps on the roof closing, so that took care of one part of the problem. But Dan soon discovered he was dealing with two different kinds of rats.
The ones on the roof are called, well, roof rats, while the rodents who prefer ground-level lifestyles are called Norway rats, Dan noted.
The roof rats are agile creatures, too, according to Christi Loso, who lives near the Hopkins and spends time at her house in a breakfast nook with a view. "Sometimes I'll look out at night and see as many as three rats at a time running back and forth on the wires," she said.
"They look like they're partying," Loso added. "It's really, really creepy." She also said that there are rats in the alley behind her house, drawn to the area because everybody puts their trashcans and recycling there.
The roof rats are also great leapers, and Dan figured out that trimming the branches on a tree in front of his house would prevent them from reaching his roof.
That was a good move, according to Bill Heaton from the King County Department of Health. "Keeping plants away from buildings gives them less access," he said of roof rats, which are increasing in numbers lately.
Dealing with Norway rats is a bit more difficult, Heaton said, because they can squirm through a hole the size of a quarter. "They're pretty ingenious characters."
Dan said he made sure all the holes leading to a crawl space under his house were covered over, but nearby neighbor Hal Abbott found out about a month ago even that won't do the trick.
" I woke up and went to go to the toilet, and there was a dead rat sitting in the toilet," he said, sounding totally grossed out. The bathroom is on the fourth floor of his house, too, Abbott said. "It just sort of shocked me."
But as unpleasant as that discovery was, it was nothing compared with a house Abbott lived in around a dozen years ago on Sixth Avenue West at the top of the Hill. That place was rundown and infested with rats, he remembered.
"We had to go through an all-out war," Abbott said of a battle that involved poison and traps. "A couple of nights I waited up for them and beat them to death with a club," he added with some satisfaction.
Part of the problem with the house on Sixth was a next-door neighbor who had a garden and fruit trees that provided resident rats with a steady diet of rotting produce, Abbott said. "We actually called the city Health Department."
Getting rid of food sources is key to getting rid of rats, noted Heaton from the Health Department. "The number one thing for them to live is they need something to eat," he said.
Roof rats prefer grains, Heaton said, so bird feeders often become rodent equivalents of mini-marts. Norway rats are less discriminating and will eat everything from rotting garbage to pet food to dog droppings, he said.
Abbott agreed with Irene that people might be embarrassed by having rats in their homes. "I think so," he said, "because people associate rats with disease and garbage and unsanitary conditions."
That's not always true, Heaton said. "It doesn't matter where you live." He gets calls about rats from all over the city, and will provide information about rodent-control measures people can take.
"Our main goal is not enforcement," he stressed. Still, people can call 206-205-4394 to lodge complaints about rats, and information about pest control can be found on the Health Department's Web site (www.metrokc.gov/health), Heaton said.
The Hopkinses aren't interested in finger-pointing or trying to make people in the neighborhood feel ashamed, Irene said. "We feel like we've won the battle," she added.
But they hope that everybody in the area will be vigilant about rats, because if they aren't, anything the she and her husband have done about the problem might become a waste of time, Irene said.
Staff reporter Russ Zabel can be reached at rzabel@nwlink.com or 461-1309.
The house she lives in on at the top of Queen Anne Hill
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